View Slideshow 1 of 2 This fall the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality, or DEQ, issued a drought watch for much of the WMRA listening area, and a number of localities from Winchester to Charlottesville encouraged — or mandated — their residents to conserve water.
Scott Kudlas is the director of the DEQ’s Office of Water Supply.
In Winchester, which is in the Shenandoah drought evaluation region, officials issued a drought watch back at the end of September, said Perry Eisenach, the city’s public services director.
This is actually the second year in a row that we’ve done that.
At the end of October the city’s water supplies from Dry River/Switzer Dam and North River were reportedly well above levels of concern.
Lexington is not in one of the DEQ’s regions under a drought watch, and didn’t have any rationing efforts in place.
The Rivanna Reservoir, which suffered that drastic water level drop, is the sole provider to one of the area’s two water treatment plants, so the area was first requested to voluntarily conserve water, and later, placed under mandatory restrictions.
Mawyer said that the Rivanna Water and Sewer Authority anticipates that mandatory water restrictions will continue until “high water levels have been sustained in the reservoir for an extended period.” Charlottesville’s director of utilities Lauren Hildebrand said last week that recent rainfall has helped substantially.
Looking further ahead, Scott Kudlas of the DEQ said what we don’t need is a second dry winter.
Last winter was very, very dry, but then we got above normal precipitation right at the end of the recharge period in the late winter, early spring, you know, that might help again, but what we’ve seen in the past is when we have more than one winter in a row that has a low recharge period, it makes it really challenging in the summertime.